I think that was what the file originally contained. I changed it because the path it was using looked wrong. It looked like it needed to be 'ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports. Anyway, I put the file back to the way you posted and here is the console output:

Can anybody post the console output of a 'normal' apt-get update command? I think the failure on my box has something to do with Ign(ignore???) when it's accessing the server. I've turned up some console output that includes 'Hit' in some of my google searches. Is there anyway to force apt to start from scratch, like this is the first time any package downloads have been tried?

I get 'Ign' for everything so it doesn't download any packages so there is no active package list. I've been working on this for about a day and a half and it still doesn't work. I'm about to write this off as a $100 loss and be done with it. Very frustrating.

All the good stuff I hear about linux and I can't get a needed function to work correctly no matter what I do. I've done enough google searches to know that what I see is not unique. It's just that I haven't been able to find any way to fix it.